


Otabek and Yuri Find a Baby

by Euphorion



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Babies, Genderfluid Character, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Sharing Clothes, genderfluid Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9134764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: Otabek and Yuri find a baby. Takes place 3-4 years post-season one.+“That’s,” Otabek said slowly, “a baby.”Yuri turned to him, the bundled child in his arms, his face frozen in terror. “This is a baby.”“That’s a baby,” Otabek said again, the deep wrongness of the statement finally filtering through to him. “Why—what—”Yuri crossed slowly to him, jiggling the baby vaguely in front of him. “What, what do we do with it,” he asked, picking up Otabek’s sentence where he’d dropped it in confusion. “Beka this is a baby what do we do with a baby—”





	

**Author's Note:**

> A beautiful girl told me to write a drabble abt Otabek and Yuri finding a baby and then 9000 words happened.
> 
> Happy New Year, everyone.

“—so I was saying that for whatever reason it’s the -kh sound that no one can really get right, and Guang-hong gave me this face like _oh yeah, try having a native language where you have to sing as well as talk_ —”

Otabek roused himself out of staring at the snowflakes on Yuri’s eyelashes long enough to frown, because hang on, that didn’t sound like their friend. “He said that?”

Yuri bit his lip. Otabek resisted the urge to high-five himself, possibly in the face. “Well, no,” Yuri admitted, “but I could tell he was thinking it. As if Chinese is really all that much—hang on.” He frowned, then spun, staring back the way they’d come.

Otabek turned to follow his gaze. The snow was beginning to form real drifts in the street. The sky was the strange muted gold-brown of true winter, the streetlights pale, shifting things in the snowy air. Otabek glanced at Yuri, who was frowning intently at the distance. “Yura—?”

Suddenly Yuri took off running, and it was only four years of close, observant friendship with him that let Otabek follow as quickly as he did. Yuri skidded left at the last alley they’d passed, then left again, his boots thudding muffled drumbeats against snowy cobbles. It was only when they’d passed two more alleyways that Otabek heard what his friend already must have—a high, hiccupping wail.

Worry seized him. Surely just some mother out late with her child—and then Yuri was shoving away rubbish in the next alley and picking something up and—

“That’s,” Otabek said slowly, “a baby.”

Yuri turned to him, the bundled child in his arms, his face frozen in terror. “ _This is a baby._ ”

“That’s a baby,” Otabek said again, the deep wrongness of the statement finally filtering through to him. “Why—what—”

Yuri crossed slowly to him, jiggling the baby vaguely in front of him. “What, what do we do with it,” he asked, picking up Otabek’s sentence where he’d dropped it in confusion. “Beka this is a _baby_ what do we do with a _baby_ —”

Otabek looked at it, at its small, pinched face. It was still crying, but quieter, seeming to somehow enjoy being bobbled by a terrified 19 year old who had probably never held a baby in his life. “Do we—”

“Hold this,” Yuri said, and then there was a baby being thrust at him and Otabek had held babies in his life before—you support the neck and you keep them...swaddled, or whatever, but the thing started up its wailing as soon as Yuri let go of it like it thought they might just leave it in the damn street again. Speaking of which, who would leave a baby here, in the snow?

He started to ask, but Yuri held up an agitated hand, his phone pressed to his ear. “Fuck,” he muttered, heartfelt, and then dialed something else. Otabek made some mostly random noises at the baby and then said, “who are you calling—”

“Yuuri and Victor,” Yuri said, as if it should be obvious.

Otabek blinked at him. “Why?”

Yuri shoved his unoccupied hand in his pocket. “They’ve been making noises about kids lately and it was the first thing I thought of, okay?”

Otabek would have laughed, but the baby was quieting down again and he was too worried that meant it was sick or not breathing or something. “You know this isn’t usually how adoption works, just because they might wants kids doesn’t mean they’re ready to have some random baby dropped in their laps—”

Yuri glared at him. “They’re more ready than we are, asshole!” He shook his head sharply. “Dammit, both their phones went straight to voicemail—shit, what day is it?”

“Language,” Otabek chided. Yuri’s glare sharpened. “Sorry, sorry. It is the 9th, I believe.”

Yuri shook his head like he did when he was trying to think. It untucked his braid from his scarf so it swung against his back; Otabek was illogically grateful for the child in his arms because otherwise he would be tempted to cross to him and fix it. “They’re both on planes til sometime tomorrow,” Yuri continued. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”

Otabek took a breath. “Okay,” he said, “options. We take her to a hospital.”

“How?” Yuri demanded. “Walking? Everyone knows better than to drive in this snow.” He scuffed his toe through the flakes. “Not much now, but…”

Otabek nodded. They were both familiar with this weather, and this sky. Within half an hour there’d be a foot and rising. 

“Someplace nearer,” Yuri said. “An, an orphanage, a shelter…”

Otabek chewed on his lip for a minute and then made a decision. “Check Google for those places while we walk.” The baby made a sound like ‘jumble’. Otabek chose to take that as a good sign.

Yuri blinked. “Walk? Walk where?”

“My place,” Otabek said, already walking. “It’s warm there, and I’m worried.”  
Yuri caught up with him after a few strides. He kept glancing up from his phone at the baby and then at Otabek’s face and then the baby again, and if he hadn’t known the area so well Otabek might have been worried he would run into something. “Why would they leave her?” he asked, finally. “What’s wrong with people?”

Otabek shook his head, unable to answer. 

They’d nearly been to his place when they stopped before, so it didn’t take long now, even without running at top-Yuri-Plisetsky speed. Otabek had a moment of being panicked about how he would get out his keys without dropped the baby but Yuri was reaching over to fish in his pocket and producing them before he could even say anything, and then they were in the familiar warmth of his apartment, stomping the snow from their boots.

The baby had stopped crying—apparently deciding he was an acceptable substitute to Yuri—and was blinking sleepily. Somehow outside she had seemed not quite real, like a _domovoi_ turfed out from her home. He’d half expected her to turn to a pile of leaves in his arms when he crossed his threshold. But there she was, brown-eyed and too-small and very much a human baby.

“What the fuck,” he muttered to her, and it came out a little awed.

Yuri hip-checked him gently on the way by. “What was that you said about language?” He had his phone to his ear again. “Victor, hi, I know you’re on a plane but like please call me as soon as you get this something weird happened and Otabek and I found—we, we found a baby? And we took it to his house but, there’s a snowstorm and neither of us are really...baby people and, yeah, call me, thanks.” He hung up and then called a second number, switching to Japanese and presumably leaving a similar message.

Otabek sat down, still staring at the baby. “What are we going to call her?”

Yuri hung up his phone and tucked it into his pocket, turning to stare at him. “Beka you know she’s not, like. Ours, right—”

“I know,” Otabek said, maybe putting a little too much force into it because there was something about hearing Yuri say ours in a context like this that set his stomach swooping. “I just mean we can’t keep referring to her as the baby, you know?”

Yuri nodded, slipping his coat from his shoulders and messing with his hair to get the snow out. “True,” he acknowledged. “I dunno, what do you think?”

Otabek thought. “Quasimodo,” he said at last.

Yuri stared at him, running his braid between his fingers. “Quasimodo,” he repeated, disbelieving.

Otabek allowed himself the tiniest of smiles at the picture of indignation he made, sitting there wringing water from his hair that must be almost as long as he was tall, his nose pink with cold. “She was abandoned on the church steps,” he pointed out.

“She was abandoned in an alleyway three blocks from here,” Yuri countered, “and you can’t just call a kid _Quasimodo_ , she’s not—you know, deformed, she’s not a hunchback—”

“Beauty is more than skin deep,” Otabek said, keeping his face straight. 

“She’s a girl—”

“We don’t know that,” Otabek chided. “She’s not old enough yet to tell us.”

That broke Yuri out of his angry pacing enough to cast him a startled look, as if he’d expected Otabek to have forgotten. As if he ever could forget Yuri looking at him with the mix of laughter and self-disdain he had every time he talked about anything personal, as if Otabek wasn’t careful to refer to him with gender neutral pronouns when privacy and language would allow, whenever Yuri was too far away to indicate which he currently preferred.

“Yeah, well, stop—stop talking like we’re going to keep her,” he said finally, a little off balance, and stomped over to sit on the couch at Otabek’s side.

Slowly—carefully—Otabek leaned over and handed Quasimodo to him. He made a small protesting noise, but accepted her, and they both watched Otabek as he stood to slip his feet back into his boots.

“What are you—don’t leave me here,” Yuri said in a panicked hiss.

“She needs food, right?” Otabek pointed out. “And—other stuff, diapers, I don’t know. I can go to the corner.”

Yuri looked unconvinced. “The snow—maybe I should go—”

Otabek _tsked_ at him. “You think just because you’re Russian you’re better at walking in snow?”

“No, I just—we’re both Russian, _basically_ —”

“Careful,” Otabek warned, cracking his neck. “You sound like Putin.”

“Oh my god,” Yuri muttered. Quasimodo reached up and punched him lightly in the jaw. “What are you even going to get to feed her?”

“Baby food,” said Otabek. “That’s what you feed babies. It’s right in the name.”

Yuri rolled his eyes. “Does the corner even sell baby food?”

Otabek nodded. “I almost bought some to feed a baby pigeon once.” He settled his coat closer around his shoulders. “Back soon.”

Yuri frowned at him, but he knew it was stress more than anger. Yuri’s real anger—bright and pinpoint focused, a sword he wielded with considerable skill—was more often kept sheathed invisibly at his hip these days. “Be careful, okay?”

“I promise I will not die in the snow like a little matchgirl,” Otabek said drily, and stepped outside.

+

Yuri looked down at the child in his arms. “A baby pigeon,” he muttered. “Why did he even have a baby pigeon? Probably rescued it from a storm drain in a display of dashing heroics or some shit.”

Quasimodo seemed to decide that since punching him in the face hadn’t made him shut the fuck up, she should try punching herself in the face, and then crying.

Yuri’s heart sank. He stood up, jiggling her a little. “Sorry, kid, sorry,” he said, trying to sound soothing and probably failing— _soothing_ was maybe the last word anyone would ever use to describe him. “I get it, thinking about Otabek’s dashing heroics makes me want to cry, too.”

He paced over to the window, bouncing on the balls of his feet a little, but all it did was make her wail hitch and wobble rhythmically. He peered through the blinds. Otabek was a solid, swift figure, walking away down the block, the only living thing in a landscape of snow and wind and solitude. Yuri turned away. “He’ll be back soon,” he reassured Quasimodo, lifting her up in his hands to look at her properly. 

He had no idea how to tell how old babies were, but she was heavy—at least heavy to be carrying all the time—and seemed...fully formed, with a pinched pink face that hadn’t quite warmed (he pressed his knuckles to it to try and lend her some of his body heat) and limbs she was currently moving erratically in time with her sobs. She looked like nothing so much as one of the old wood-and-wire dolls Yuri’s grandfather had in his attic, with painted faces and the joints that moved but never moved quite right. “ _Kukla_ ,” he muttered, and brought her down to cradle her against his chest again. “Shh, shh.”

She calmed, at least for the moment, and Yuri found himself just looking around Otabek’s apartment. He’d been here before, of course, but never without his friend; he was surprised at how normal it felt, how familiar the silence was. Unlike his own lavishly decorated but mostly ignored apartment in St Petersburg, it felt like Otabek really lived here. It was small and old-fashioned, everything wrought in dark wood, with interesting-looking books on the shelves and worn out comfortable chairs and the sofa had little feet. “Cute,” Yuri said, and sat down on it, then shifted so he could flop down on his back, Quasimodo against his chest and his legs up on the arm rest. “Unbearable.”

He hadn’t really been planning to stay. He’d come to see Otabek because it had been months since they’d last competed and longer since they last hung out and he missed him—he always fucking missed him. In the old days he could have just shown up and they would have had an awesome time tooling around Almaty and he would never leave til Yakov’s calls damn near broke his phone but.

It’s not that he couldn’t do that anymore. He knew for a fact Otabek’s door would always be open to him, that would always be true, it had been true since they’d first shaken hands on the steps in Barcelona but now—now it was like as soon as he stepped inside Otabek withdrew, just a little, pulling back inside himself the more Yuri wormed his way in. For a boy who always seemed to say what he meant he wore about six dozen layers of armor, and it was fucking frustrating.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked Quasimodo, who only worked her mouth around soundlessly in reply. “Maybe he’s keeping secrets from me, hm? Maybe,” he said, dramatically lowering his voice, “he’s got a _boyfriend_.”

Quasimodo pushed spit out between her lips. Yuri fervently agreed.

He tried to look around, upside-down, for any sign of such a person. He wasn’t really sure what he was looking for, though, and gave up quickly when Quasimodo gave a hiccuping sort of cough and startled herself into crying again. He sighed and tried to remember the lullabies his grandmother used to sing him before she died. “ _Mishka kosolapyy po lesu idot_ ,” he sang, softly. She gave him a worried look. “Don’t worry, he’ll be okay,” he reassured her. “ _Shishki sobirayet, pesenki poyet._ ” He touched her cheek—she seemed warmer, now. “ _Shishka otvalilas' pryamo mishke v lob. Mishka rasserdilya i nogoyu top!_ ”

Otabek pushed the door open, and Yuri stopped singing. “Oh, thank god,” he said, sitting up a little. “I think she’s hungry—every time she stops crying she starts again about five seconds later.”

Otabek set down his bags and pushed a hand through his hair, droplets of melted snow running down the column of his neck. He was breathing a little hard, his cheeks flushed with cold and exertion, and Yuri was glad he said something before properly looking at him because now it was less weird for him to just. Stare. 

_He must have a boyfriend,_ his brain said, a little frantic. _Look at him._

Otabek stripped off his coat and tossed it onto one of the chairs. “Yuri,” he said, his voice rough with cold, and Yuri fought not to squeak like a mouse in reply. “Can you help me?”

Yuri looked down at Quasimodo, who was crying in a listless, stop-and-start sort of way, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I’ll just—”

He carefully maneuvered himself out from under her, placing her on her back on the couch, and went to join Otabek, who was sorting out bags. “I got formula, also,” he said. “Because I wasn’t sure how old she was, I thought maybe we could give her both?”

He sounded stressed in a way Yuri wasn’t used to, and it made him wonder why he wasn’t _more_ stressed, why being in Otabek’s apartment with a baby they had no idea what to do with felt somehow like a surmountable challenge. He knocked his shoulder into his friend’s. “Hey,” he said, trying to get Otabek to meet his eyes. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Otabek glanced at him, looked back down at the jars and bottles in his hands, and then looked at him again, his eyes warming and his lips turning up. He looked like he wanted to say something, but just let out a laughing sort of sigh, instead, shaking his head.

Yuri raised an eyebrow at him. “What?”

Otabek shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, and then, “Just—when I left you were like an anxious cat with your back all arched up and now you’re here like you do this every day.” He put the handful of small jars on his coffee table. “Are you sure you don’t? Like Superman?” He reached up and tugged Yuri’s earlobe. “Is that how you heard her from so far away?”

Yuri fought him off, reddening. “Shut—shut up, I’m not the one saving baby pigeons from storm drains—”

Otabek raised his eyebrows. “How did you know—”

“Because _of course_ you did,” Yuri said, unpacking diapers with dread. He paused. “Maybe she’s Superman,” he said, looking at Quasimodo, who lay miserable and incongruous on Otabek’s couch. “Sent here from Krypton.”

“It’s a nicer thought, isn’t it,” Otabek said quietly, “than to think she was unwanted. Everything is nicer than being unwanted.”

Yuri glanced at him, and for a split second of total stillness Otabek looked back. It was over so fast Yuri thought he might have imagined it, Otabek stepping out of his boots and over to the couch to pick Quasimodo up, but there was something in his eyes that curled around Yuri’s heart and refused to let go. “First thing to do is change her,” Otabek said firmly. “Then we do some Googling and figure out food.”

“Right,” said Yuri, shaking himself. “Right.”

It took them a few tries, but they finally got Quasimodo clean and fed (with some expert Googling and a muttered “shame we can’t just cut her open and count her rings like she’s a tree” from Otabek they determined she was probably between 4 and 8 months old—she could sit up, with effort, but couldn’t yet crawl—and thus could be fed from the jars and not the bottle), and the difference it made to her mood was incredible. She went quiet, looking around at everything with wide brown eyes, and would grip Yuri’s fingers when he offered them, shaking them around as if to say hello.

Otabek vanished into his bedroom while Yuri had her on his lap, trying with mumbled, not very heartfelt curses to clean her cheeks. “You’re ridiculous,” he told her. “Utterly useless. Can’t even hold a spoon.”

He glanced up when Otabek leaned back into the room. “Don’t be mean to the baby, Yuri,” he said, and Yuri caught a glimpse of muscled shoulder and chest before he’d vanished again.

“Don’t listen to him,” he muttered to Quasimodo, dry-mouthed. “He doesn’t understand that knowing your weaknesses is the path to true strength. He probably thinks strength is all...muscles, and. Arms, and shit.”

Otabek emerged from his room, still shirtless, looking triumphant and holding a large round disk of curved blue plastic. Yuri stared at him. “Is that—”

“A sled,” Otabek confirmed. “It’s a sled.”

Yuri wrinkled his nose at him. “You want to go sledding? In this weather?” He paused, and then continued, because someone had to acknowledge it. “Shirtless?”

“I want to make a crib,” Otabek said, as if that should be obvious. He leaned down and put the sled on the floor, and Yuri was met with the full expanse of his chest and shoulders and his left arm, which was unexpectedly adorned. Otabek’s skin from his shoulder to his elbow was a riot of colors that it took Yuri’s startled eyes a minute to parse into flowers, yellow and pink and blue blossoms twining around and through one another with a delicacy and intricacy that took his already-shortened breath away.

“Tattoo,” is all he managed to say, and then shook himself, “when, um, when did you—”

“Oh,” said Otabek, following his gaze. He ran a broad palm over his bicep and Yuri nearly swallowed his tongue. “A year. About.” He snapped his fingers. “Yuri, the sled.”

Yuri tore his eyes away and tried really hard to pay attention to whatever weird thing he was trying to do with the sled. “Right, sorry, I’ve just been thinking about getting some myself and it looks, it’s really good, maybe you can recommend me an artist,” he babbled, because he needed some reason for staring like a goddamn landed fish.

“Sure,” said Otabek, very kindly pretending Yuri wasn’t making a fool of himself, and crouched down. The sled was sitting on the floor like a bowl. Carefully, like a magician revealing his secrets, Otabek pushed one side of the sled down and released it. It wobbled.

Yuri stared at it, and then at Otabek’s face, and then at the sled again. “That’s it?”

Otabek looked vaguely wounded. “It rocks,” he said. “Like a rocker. Soothing.”

Yuri lifted Quasimodo from one knee to the other, peering at her face. “What do you think, _kukla?_ Does it look soothing to you?”

“Look,” said Otabek, “we take a pillow—” he stretched back into his room and grabbed one, “—and we lay it in like this.” He lay the pillow in the bowl of the sled. “And then we take the baby,” he held out his hands for Quasimodo, and Yuri passed her over, feeling absurdly like maybe he was actually getting the hang of handling her now that he didn’t think she was made of glass. Otabek tucked her into the pillowcase, one palm under her head. “And then we have a crib. And it rocks.”

He pushed down on one side of the makeshift crib. It did, in fact, rock back on itself. 

“I’m not the one you have to impress,” Yuri said, though he was pretty impressed. “We’ll see what Quasimodo says, hm?”

Otabek grinned up at him from where he was now seated on the floor. The tension from earlier seemed to have drained entirely away now that he had something to do, and left him at ease and comfortable, a man in his own home. Yuri—feeling by the second more overheated and strange in his own skin—could barely hear him over the beat of his own heart when Otabek said, “you are coming around to the name.”

Yuri lifted his shoulders to try and work some of the tension out of his back, as well as seem a little less like a weird gremlin covered in baby food perching haphazardly at Otabek’s kitchen table. He didn’t deign the remark with an answer. His head ached with the weight of his braid. “Beka,” he said, suddenly very, very tired, and if everyone he’d ever heard talk about babies was right, not much sleep was going to be had tonight. “Would you mind if I used your shower?”

Otabek blinked at him. “Of course,” he said. “There are towels in the closet by the bathroom door.”

“Thanks.” Yuri slipped from the chair and padded down the hall, tugging the tie from his hair as he went.

+

Quasimodo slept for about ten minutes, which if Google was to be believed wasn’t actually bad. Otabek carried her back into the living room and nestled her on one end of the couch, then checked on the world outside his window.

By the time he’d gotten back from the store there had been about a foot of snow on the ground. Now there were about three, with no sign of stopping. Otabek let the curtain fall and stared at its featureless cloth. Trapped in a snowstorm with Yuri. Trapped in a snowstorm with Yuri and a child, two things he had loved and wanted since he was old enough to understand them, and neither of them were his.

Not—not that he wanted a baby yet, his career was utterly incompatible with being a father, and he had way too much he still wanted to do on the ice before he even thought about fatherhood in any real way. But fatherhood had always been there, a constant _someday_ , the way Yuri himself had been.

Having them both here with nowhere to go was like. It was like some twisted version of his ideal future, and judging by the snow he was stuck in it at least all night, if not longer.

He’d let himself relax and play-act a bit with the sled, but it was time to cut that out. Pull himself in, keep himself in line, or he was going to say something stupid and make their forced cohabitation even more awkward. 

He sighed and went to put on a shirt. 

He was just pulling it over his head when Quasimodo woke up and started crying. He crossed to her and pushed downy tufts of hair from her eyes. “Sh, sh,” he soothed her, and tried rocking the sled again. He would have to figure out a way that it would sway on its own—it was good for one and a half arcs, currently. Not nearly enough. He huffed a laugh. “We’ll have you doing quads before too long.”

He rocked her by hand for another moment, and her wailing quieted. He heard the bathroom door open, and Yuri called, “Hey, could I maybe borrow a shirt? Mine has—whatever the stuff in that green jar is, maybe some kind of hell pear—all over it, something tells me I’d get tired of that smell real fast.”

Otabek very carefully didn’t turn around. “Sure,” he called back, because. Sure, why not deepen this weird dreamscape and have Yuri wear his fucking clothes. “Take whatever.”

“Thanks,” Yuri called back, and presumably disappeared into his bedroom, half-naked, and Otabek rocked Quasimodo with a concentration that the extremely simple task truly didn’t call for.

She’d settled into a strange fitful bubble-blowing sleep again by the time Yuri emerged, one hand raised to keep the towel knotted on his head steady as he settled Otabek’s favorite shirt around his shoulders. Otabek ran his palms along his thighs and didn’t stare at the graceful line of his neck, the way his shirt showed all of Yuri’s collarbone and damn near half his pecs. He wondered if Yuri knew it was his favorite, if he’d seen it on him enough, if this was some kind of test.

Yuri settled into the opposite corner of the couch, pulling his knees up to his chest and leaning over to make little soothing noises to the unhappily-burbling Quasimodo, and Otabek decided it was definitely a test, if not by Yuri than by God. “ _Mishka kosolapyy po lesu idot,_ ” Yuri sang quietly, a lullaby Otabek recognized from his own childhood, a story about a little clumsy bear. “ _Shishki sobirayet, pesenki poyet._ ”

“ _Shishka otvalilas' pryamo mishke v lob,_ ” Otabek continued from where he left off. “ _Mishka rasserdilya i nogoyu top._ ”

Yuri glanced up at him through golden eyelashes and Otabek’s heart pinballed off his ribs. “You’ll be a good parent,” he said, because he couldn’t help it.

The corner of Yuri’s mouth turned up. “You’re the only one who’s ever said that to me, and I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. Aren’t you the one always telling me not to curse at the baby?”

Otabek waved a hand. “I wouldn’t be so presumptuous about someone else’s kid,” he said. 

For some reason that made Yuri sit back, his smile fading. “Yeah, well,” he said, and then said nothing else.

Otabek wanted to ask him more—if he thought about kids at all, if he had friends with children, if being raised by his grandfather had given him any thoughts on parenting or, or family structures, he wanted to know everything about Yuri, had always wanted to know. But he was worried knowing would make it worse, either because Yuri’s thoughts on family would be so far from his own or because they wouldn’t.

“Hey,” said Yuri, softly. “Thanks for not saying ‘father’.” 

Otabek looked sideways at him. “Of course,” he said. “I wasn't sure if—”

Yuri nodded. “They, right now,” they confirmed. “Was feeling more masc earlier, but.”

Otabek nodded, watching as they unwound their towel from several feet of damp, tangled golden hair. With a sigh they reached over to fish around in their coat and came out with a comb, then sat back again. 

“You really think I'm going to forget?” Otabek asked, hoping that it didn’t come out as bitter as it tasted in his mouth.

Yuri raised a shoulder in a shrug, working the comb through the tips of their hair. “It’s not like you see me that often,” they said. “And people who do still mess it up, or don’t check in—not that I really expect them to know when they should, or anything, it’s just. I need a sign, I guess.” They shifted their grip upward, the comb moving through their hair with practiced motions. They looked like nothing so much as some kind of otherworldly, alluring merperson, perched on Otabek’s couch like it was a rock thrust forth from the tides.

Which was really just another way of saying they were so beautiful Otabek wanted to drown himself, but that was nothing new. He stood, stretching his back. “Are you hungry?”

Yuri looked surprised, like the idea hadn’t occurred to them. “Christ, what time is it, even? Between the snow and the baby I feel like I’m in the goddamn twilight zone.”

“It’s—” Otabek checked his phone, and was surprised himself. “Two AM.”

“Right,” said Yuri, and shifted their comb higher. “Food would be awesome.” 

They made as if to stand up, but Otabek waved them back down. “Finish your hair,” he said, “I’ll make us something.”

Yuri settled back into the couch. “Thanks,” they said. “If I let it dry like this it’ll be a nightmare.” They sighed. “Sometimes I just want to chop it all off.”

“Don’t,” said Otabek, too quickly. He opened his cabinets at random until he found some cans of soup, planning on just making something quick, and then changed his mind. He actually had groceries in the apartment, for once, and Yuri Plisetsky on his couch wearing his clothes, and maybe he wanted to. Indulge himself.

It was a bad idea. But. He smiled to himself, weariness maybe making him a little giddy. _You know what they say—when life gives you babies, make a homecooked meal for your best friend with whom you’re in unrequited love._

He put the soup back and started taking things out of the fridge, thinking about the things he knew Yuri liked, listening to them hum softly to Quasimodo, letting himself sink into the familiar rhythm of cooking, into the fantasy. Eventually Yuri came to join him, effortlessly pushing themself up to sit on the counter at his side. Their hair was loose, pulled over one shoulder, a waterfall of brushed gold.

“She’s sleeping?” Otabek asked quietly, not letting himself look too long.

“Mm,” said Yuri, their eyes on Otabek’s hands. “I didn’t know you cooked.”

“When I have time,” Otabek said. _When I want to impress._

Yuri crossed their ankles. “Can I give you a hand?”

Otabek shook his head. “Never reject a Kazakh’s hospitality,” he said. “Besides, one of us should have clean hands in case Quasimodo wakes up.”

Yuri seemed to concede the point, lapsing into silence that became more comfortable as it stretched, too comfortable, comfortable in a way that ate at Otabek’s already thin self control. “What tattoos would you get?” he asked, to say anything, because saying was better than doing and his lips kept parting every time he glanced at Yuri’s face.

Yuri blinked at the subject change. “What?”

“Earlier you said you’d been thinking of getting tattoos,” Otabek said, dropping onion and cumin into hissing oil. “What would you get?”

“Oh,” said Yuri, and tilted their head upward to stare at Otabek’s ceiling. “I don’t know, really,” they said slowly. “I would want it to mean something, commemorate something. The 2016 Grand Prix, maybe.”

Otabek smiled sideways at them. “The first time you won gold.”

Yuri tucked their hair behind their ear. “The first time for a lot of things.”

Otabek carefully split the casing of a sausage, not thinking too hard about that. “The first time you beat Katsuki,” he said, knowing it would redirect them onto safer ground.

Yuri hummed, amused. “Not the last.”

“No,” said Otabek, “not the last.”

Silence again, fragrant and full.

“Beka.” Otabek didn’t look at them until they reached out and touched him, dipping their fingers under the sleeve of his t-shirt to touch his tattoo. “What does it mean?”

Otabek silently cursed himself for choosing this, of all topics. He had his standard answer— _it’s about faith in myself, and in an ideal_ —but somehow he didn't think the vagueness would fly with Yuri. They saw through bullshit like no one Otabek had ever known. They did a lot of things like no one Otabek had ever known.

He placed the lid on his pot to let it simmer. _Yellow zinnia for absent friends._ “It’s a reminder,” he said, “about expectations.” _Pink rose for grace._ He took a breath and met Yuri’s eyes. Would they get it? Would they appreciate it, if they did? _Forget-me-nots for faithful love._ “About the point at which respect becomes a burden, and hope a heavier one.” _Hyacinth for forgiveness._

Yuri stared at him, fingers still on his bicep. “Cryptic,” they said at last, and hopped down from the counter, and Otabek was both relieved and deeply, frustratingly disappointed.

They ate at the table, surrounded by tiny jars, clean diapers, and unopened packets of formula. Yuri took one bite and then stared at Otabek, wide-eyed. “Okay, what the fuck—”

Otabek heart flipped over. “You like it?” He asked, as casually as he could.

Yuri finished chewing and thrust a finger at him. “You’re sending me this recipe,” they said, like a threat, and shoved more into their mouth.

“You watched me make it,” Otabek pointed out, “you mean you can’t just reproduce it perfectly?” He smirked. “Weren’t you the one who told me you could copy any footwork sequence on the ice after seeing it just once—”

“Cooking is not skating,” Yuri grumbled, “which is why this isn’t fucking fair, no one has a right to be as good at both as you are.”

Otabek sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Maybe that’s my problem,” he said. “Maybe if I were shit at cooking I would have taken gold last time.”

Yuri sucked sour cream from the tip of their thumb. “You can think that all you like,” they said innocently.

Otabek—lazily, contentedly—flipped them off.

After dinner Yuri insisted upon doing dishes, which left Otabek the dubious joy of changing Quasimodo when she shriekingly demanded it. Afterward she was bright-eyed and aware, and rather than putting her back in the sled-crib Otabek sat her on the floor and crouched next to her, casting around for something that she could play with. His apartment had little in the way of children’s toys, however, and eventually he got up and retrieved a couple of his medals from his drawer and handed them to her. She took them eagerly, staring at her own face in the reflective metal, and then started happily banging them together like cymbals. 

“What the hell,” Yuri said, wandering over. They’d pulled their hair back into a loose bun to eat, and wayward strands were escaping around their face. Their eyes widened. “You can’t just give your medals to a _baby_ —”

Otabek shrugged. “I wasn’t using them for anything.” He took in the weary slant of Yuri’s shoulders, the tiredness of their eyes. “You can sleep a bit, I’ll watch her.”

Yuri blinked at him. “You’re sure?”

Otabek smiled at them, hiding a yawn of his own. “We’ll take shifts, I promise. Go on, I’ll wake you in an hour or so.”

Yuri looked like they wanted to fight him for a moment, but gave up. “Promise,” they warned, already stepping toward Otabek’s bedroom.

“Cross my heart and hope to place 6th,” Otabek called, and Yuri’s laugh slid down his spine like lightest possible caress.

+

Yuri woke, utterly disoriented, to a half-familiar room painted pre-dawn grey. There were sheets tangled around their legs—not hotel sheets but not their sheets, either, and a window with snow beyond, and—Otabek was leaning in the doorway, watching them.

“What—” Yuri said, their voice coming out gravelly with sleep, and then everything made sense again. “You didn’t wake me.”

“Sorry,” said Otabek, and Yuri couldn’t see his face quite right, and then he stepped into the room, his arms loose at his sides and his face oddly blank. “Sorry,” he said again, “I wasn’t going to say anything but I let you sleep and without you I got trapped in this loop, in my head, and there’s something I can’t quite figure out.”

Yuri sat up, shifting so they were sitting on the edge of the bed. “Okay?” they said, deeply confused.

Otabek licked his lips, drifting closer. “You were so dismissive, earlier,” he said. “Twice, you really acted as if I would have forgotten about our conversation a year ago—”

Yuri frowned at him. “Yeah, I was surprised, because like I said, you don’t see me that often—”

Otabek stared at them. “You—” He started, and then tried again. “You don’t think I might have some other reason to remember that conversation?”

Yuri scowled at him, getting annoyed. They were tired, and Otabek had broken his promise, and they were just retreading familiar ground that they would really prefer not to return to. “What do you mean? I told you my weird gender shit, you were as immediately supportive and great as you always are, and then you left, that was it!”

“That—” Otabek licked his lips, his voice incredulous. “Yuri. I told you I _loved_ you.”

Yuri shifted, suddenly and ridiculously nervous, feeling pinned down by the intensity of his gaze. “Yeah, you were being a supportive friend—”

“No,” said Otabek slowly, “no, no, I left because I told you I loved you and you said “thank you” and called me your best friend and that was a pretty fucking clear—”

“—you _are_ my best friend,” Yuri said, a rushing in their ears, “what, what are you saying—”

“—you’re saying,” Otabek said, crossing to them, “you’re saying that this entire time, this entire year, you thought I just meant it in a friend way.”

“Yeah,” said Yuri, or at least they tried to—it came out more a whisper than a word. “You—you didn’t.”

Otabek was standing between their knees, now, looking down at them. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

Yuri stared up at him, their heart in their mouth.

“Yuri.” The pearlescent light of dawn lit half of Otabek’s face and throat and chest, like someone had painted him in watercolors.

Yuri swallowed hard. “Y-yeah.”

“I love you,” Otabek said, simple and matter-of-fact, like he’d never been more sure of anything in his life. “In a real way, in a romantic way, I’ve been in love with you for years.”

The line of his jaw and the curve of his cheekbone were as delicate pink as the petals on his arm and Yuri wondered—somewhere, distantly, more like memory than thought—if it was sunrise-light or if he was blushing. They wanted to reach up and cup his jaw, run their thumb over his cheek to check its heat.

So they did, slow and trembling. 

Otabek closed his eyes and turned his face into their touch, his lips brushing Yuri’s palm, and Yuri snatched their hand back, standing up in a rush and shoving at Otabek’s chest. “You _asshole,_ ” they snapped. “What the fuck!”

Otabek took a step back, eyes wide and confused. “What—”

Yuri advanced on him, rage uncoiling in their stomach. “You think the best time to tell me about your fucking feelings is in the middle of a conversation where I’m clearly distracted by the idea that you might think I’m a fucking freak of nature—”

Otabek held up his hands in a vague attempt to ward them off. “Yuri—”

“—and then when I _very obviously_ don’t recognize them for what they are you decide to never bring it up again, maybe at some point when I am not _deafened with nerves_ and can _actually fucking respond to you?_ ”

A piercing wail from the living room reminded them that they probably shouldn’t be shouting. Otabek offered a weak, “the baby—” and Yuri snapped, “yes, I _know_ I woke the fucking baby!”

They stormed past Otabek and scooped Quasimodo up, jiggling her angrily on their hip. “You think,” they continued, wheeling back to glare at Otabek where he lingered like a useless lump in the doorway to his bedroom, “that the better option—better than talking to your best friend at a point when they have some fucking emotional stability—is to decide that I don’t give a shit about your feelings and you have to be some kind of–of self-pitying love-martyr, is that what you think?”

“I—” Otabek began.

“Shut the fuck up!” Yuri snapped. “You don’t get to talk! If you wanted to talk you should have done it sometime in the last god damn year you spent being fucking weird at me!” They took a minute to lift Quasimodo up and cradle her against their shoulder, settling on the arm of Otabek’s couch. “You know what I thought?” They continued, quieter. “I thought you were keeping secrets from me, I thought—I thought you had a boyfriend.”

Otabek blinked at them. “You thought I had a what?”

“Listen,” Yuri said, “in my world? The world where you didn’t tell me you loved me a year ago because, newsflash, if I didn’t get the message then it wasn’t fucking sent, in that world you are a ridiculously hot ridiculously talented ridiculously _good_ man, and there is no earthly reason for you to not have a boyfriend.”

“Except I don’t want a boyfriend,” Otabek said, his voice calm, but Yuri could see his hands shaking before he tucked them into his pockets. Quasimodo sobbed something in Yuri’s ear and when they looked up again Otabek had crossed the room on silent feet, suddenly in Yuri’s space. He reached out a hand and tugged a strand of Yuri’s hair escaping from their bun. “I don’t want a boyfriend,” he repeated, “unless they’re also sometimes my girlfriend, and also sometimes both.”

He tilted Yuri’s chin up with a knuckle and leaned down, brushing his lips against Yuri’s softly before kissing them properly, his lips warm and wide. Yuri kissed him back—it would have taken a willpower strong enough to break the orbit of the earth not to—but they were talking again as soon as Otabek pulled away. “You only dared to kiss me while I’m angry because I’m holding a baby and I can’t punch you in the head.”

Otabek’s tongue flicked out to touch the corner of his mouth, his eyes tracing hot over Yuri’s face, and Yuri was glad the couch was holding most of their weight because having their knees buckle right now would severely decrease their intimidation power. “I might have chanced it anyway,” Otabek said quietly. “You’re insanely beautiful when you’re angry.”

Yuri felt their whole body flush hot. Quasimodo—perhaps feeling ignored—redoubled her crying efforts directly in their ear. “Okay,” they said, secretly grateful for the distraction. “Okay, I get it.” They stood up again, running a hand up and down her back, making small soothing sounds and re-treading their now-familiar pacing route to the window. “I get it, _kukla_ , you have my attention.”

Otabek took their place leaning against the couch, Yuri could feel his eyes on their back. “Maybe she’s hungry again,” he suggested.

Yuri had a ridiculous, residual flash of anger— _don’t tell me how to raise my child_ —and then made themself relax. “Probably,” they admitted, and sighed. “Okay, look, truce til we get her to sleep, but don’t think you’re off the hook.”

They turned and fixed Otabek with a look. Infuriatingly—heart-stoppingly—he stared right back, eyes dark. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m not done with you either.”

Yuri coughed and stepped past him to the kitchen. 

Otabek followed him in. “Here,” he said, holding out his arms. “Let me.”

Yuri passed Quasimodo over—she was sniffling, still, but maybe sensed they were giving her what she wanted—and Otabek smiled at them. “You already ruined your shirt, no sense getting hell pear all over another.”

Yuri raised a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s your shirt either way,” they said, and swiped the offending jar off the counter. 

Otabek settled in one of the chairs, sitting Quasimodo up on his knee. “I thought maybe you knew that shirt was my favorite,” he said, almost absent, but there was still an edge to it. “I thought maybe you were testing me.”

Yuri rolled their eyes and sat in the chair opposite him, dipping the tiny spoon into the jar. “Get over yourself,” they said. “I needed a shirt.” They paused, and then, without looking at Otabek’s face, “though I might have chosen one with a wide neck on purpose.”

They leaned forward, touching Quasimodo’s chin to get her to pay attention and then carefully getting as much of the horrible pear goo in her mouth as possible. Otabek lifted a hand and caught them before they pulled back, wrapping his broad palm around the back of Yuri’s neck and tugging them in to kiss them again. Yuri made a surprised noise against his mouth that they hoped didn’t come out too pleased.

“I said _truce_ ,” they muttered when they finally convinced themself to pull away.

Otabek smiled a slow smile. “Truce means no fighting,” he pointed out. “I am not fighting you.”

Yuri busied themself with the baby food again so they didn’t start screaming. “I _meant_ we don’t—you know, continue this conversation, did you forget that we _found a baby_ —”

“You will notice I am also not conversing with you,” Otabek pointed out, his smile growing.

Yuri scoffed at him, flustered wordless, and fed Quasimodo another bite. 

She did eventually sleep—Otabek set her rocking gently in the sled-crib—and Yuri checked their phone. 6 AM—almost real person hours, their flight in 7, and probably at least six feet of snow in the streets outside, although not for long; they could hear the plows somewhere not far off, scraping away at the shell of their strange twilight egg-universe. Otabek was at the window, perhaps checking on the same thing, and Yuri crossed to him.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it might be,” Otabek said, turning away from the view of the street. “I think—”

Yuri shoved him against the wall, hands skimming through the perfect short sides of his hair to grip and bring their mouths together hard. Otabek’s lips parted in surprise and Yuri pressed their advantage, slipping their tongue into his mouth and pressing themself all along him, chest to chest and hips to hips. Otabek’s hands came up to pull him minutely closer, one at the small of their back and the other skimming over their shoulderblades. Yuri allowed him to pull back for air and Otabek—rough-voiced—murmured, “Yuri, _god_ , I thought you were mad at me—”

“I am mad at you,” Yuri growled, and bit him on the corner of the jaw. “But if you think I’m going to spend the last few hours I have with you before I go back to Russia _arguing_ —”

Otabek’s whole body twitched against them. “Right, good point,” he muttered, shifted both of his hands to Yuri’s ass, and picked them up.

Yuri—out of instinct more than artifice because their whole brain sort of blanked out for a second—wrapped their legs around his waist and buried their face against his neck. The noise they made was entirely justified, under the circumstances, and if they repeated it when Otabek carried them into his bedroom and _dropped them into his bed_ , well. Otabek certainly didn’t seem to mind.

He was all warm hands and an eager mouth and Yuri briefly lost track of themself between the two. They managed at some point to flip over so Yuri was sitting atop Otabek’s hips, staring down at him, hands against the swift rise and fall of his chest. They slid one hand left, brushing knuckles over the blossoms inked into his skin. “That shit I said about tattoos,” they said, voice coming out broken, “I made that up to cover how much I was staring at this.”

Otabek slipped his hands up under their shirt, tracing patterns against their ribs. “You’d look so good with them.”

Yuri bent down over him, framing his face with their hands. “Maybe I’ll get a little bear,” they said, and kissed him.

+

At 9:36 someone knocked on the door. Yuri—halfway through pouring coffee, shirtless—froze. “Who—”

Otabek ran the hand that Quasimodo wasn’t currently trying to fit in her mouth over his face. “Maybe it’s her mom,” he said, a hysterical note to his voice. “Maybe we accidentally stole her.”

Yuri set down the coffee pot and grabbed a shirt—it didn’t matter which one, they were both Otabek’s anyway—from the couch, slipping it over their head. “Don’t be an idiot,” they hissed, crossing to the door. “She was in an alley, no one just keeps a baby in an alley—”

He opened the door. Yuuri and Victor stood on Otabek’s doorstep, faces matching mixes of worry and relief. “Oh, thank god,” Victor said, draping himself over Yuri’s shoulders. “You’re okay, you’re alive—”

“What the fuck,” said Yuri, as Yuuri stepped past him. “Of course I’m alive, what the fuck are you _doing_ here—”

“Where’s the baby?” Yuuri demanded, and Yuri remembered—as if it had been a thousand fucking years ago—his panicked voicemails on their phones.

“She’s fine,” Otabek said, and as if in answer Quasimodo started screeching.

Victor released Yuri. “We got your voicemails during our layover in Paris and switched flights immediately to come save you,” he said, crossing to Otabek. “Oh, she’s darling!”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Yuri said, annoyed. “We’re fine, look, we have it under control.”

“We called the local hospital,” Yuuri said, crouching down to touch Quasimodo’s face. She looked worried. She had good eyebrows for worry. “They said they can take her in and pass her into foster care.”

Victor nodded. “We can drop her off on our way back to the airport,” he offered, and then seemed to look at Yuri for the first time. They pulled their tangled hair forward in a probably-too-late attempt to hide the conspicuous bruise under their jaw. Victor’s eyes gleamed. “You guys must be tired after dealing with this little one all night.”

Otabek looked up, and Yuri met his eyes, their embarrassment fading into a weird kind of unease. It was the right thing to do—it was the only thing to do—and the idea of having more than fifteen uninterrupted minutes with Otabek was such a relief it was dizzying. But.

“Yeah,” they said at last, “just—let us say goodbye?”

Yuuri smiled at them and nodded, and Yuri crossed to Otabek and knelt so they could look at Quasimodo’s face. “Hey,” they said, “ _kukla_.” They struggled for words—it’s not like she could even understand them, and everyone was listening. They scowled. “I meant what I said earlier—you’re never gonna get anywhere in life if you can’t even lift a spoon.”

Quasimodo reached out, grabbed a chunk of their hair, and tugged hard.

Victor laughed. “Someone’s joining the great tradition of not listening to their coach.”

Yuri rolled their eyes and leaned forward, kissing Quasimodo on the forehead. She was too soft against their lips, impossibly soft, an unformed thing that would someday be a person. They looked up and met Otabek’s eyes, open and unguarded for the first time in a year.

Otabek also bent down and kissed the top of Quasimodo’s head. “Thank you,” he muttered, just loud enough for Yuri to hear.

Victor and Yuuri were gone as swiftly as they’d come, and for a moment Yuri just stood, staring around at an apartment that felt somehow a hundred times emptier. “Coffee,” they said at last. “I was—coffee.”

+

Otabek came with them to the airport, and there was a moment where Yuri thought he might kiss them goodbye, but—if there was anything Yuri had learned from being an international sports star it was that just because they didn’t see anyone snapping pics, that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Instead Otabek handed them their carry-on and raised a hand to briefly touch a knuckle to Yuri’s jaw and then they were away through customs and curled into the familiar discomfort of an airplane seat.

Before they left the tarmac Yuri unlocked their phone, typing without letting themself think too hard about it. _I do love you,_ they sent, and then, _and if you actually place 6th just because of that stupid promise you broke I’ll never kiss you again._

They turned off their data for the flight, and when they landed at St Petersburg turned it back on again to receive a string of emojis—a pink blossom, a golden heart, and a bear.

**Author's Note:**

> The translation of the russian lullaby they sing:  
> "A clumsy little bear was walking through the forest  
> He was gathering pine cones and singing songs  
> A pine cone fell directly onto his forehead.  
> The little bear got angry and stamped his foot!"
> 
> Yuri called Quasimodo "kukla", which means doll.
> 
> Otabek's tattoo is based on [this beautiful art](https://twitter.com/sun_god_rising/status/812671858935898113) by sun_god_rising on twitter.


End file.
